Pádraig Grant

"....for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite." Charles Baudelaire

I am a flaneur. I am a street photographer. I was a photo-journalist. Eight books of my photographs have been published.
I am of the opinion that you are only as good as your next picture; the past is always present in a picture as some witty commentator once said.

I was born in Wexford and my old house on High Street has a photographic history and an unbroken line may be traced from the birth of photography in Wexford to the present day. That is over 150 years of history! Lucky me!

My great grandfather dabbled in the dark art and the first resident professional photographer in the town had lodging and a studio in the house on High Street. The remains of the Victorian era photography studio are evident in my old back garden.

This was my foundation; I was forever finding old glass photo chemical phials and other paraphernalia associated with making and fixing images to paper that were hitherto blank! The desire to make an image magically appear with paper and chemicals was and is fascinating for me.

It wasn't until a few years later that I saw Eugene Smith's 'Bathing Tomoko'. This image was the first picture to move me to tears. "Aha", I said to myself,"this is what I want to make happen!"

I started my career as a serious news freelance photo-journalist in 1987. I spent the next fifteen years up to my (conscientious) neck witnessing all forms of human barbarity.

Rwanda 1994. There are no words.

I worked for all the major Irish and international newspapers and magazines including the New York Times and The Sunday Times (UK) and Irish Times and Sunday Tribune (Ireland).

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I plant and plough two distinct image growing furrows. The hardest things in my photographic world are making expressive, simple images and creating my own clichés......

I travel and search for the universal themes; it is my desire to hunt for images in every part of this wonderful world.

The second furrow is to apply my world view and experience to making images of my home place. The return home marks a new creative beginning as the commonplace is freshly revealed.

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I am convinced that all human conditions, interactions and daily dramas play out right in front of us. The whole world is right in front of us always and wherever we may be.